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The Alpine ibex (Capra ibex), also known as the steinbock, is a species of goat that lives in the Alps of Europe. Its closest living relative is the Iberian ibex. They have brownish-grey coats and sharp hooves adapted to steep, rough terrain. Found at elevations as high as 3,300 metres (10,800 ft), they are active throughout the year, primarily feeding on grass in open alpine meadows. Adult males, which are larger than the females, segregate from them for most of the year, coming together only during the breeding season, when they fight for access to the females using their long horns. The Alpine ibex has been successfully reintroduced to parts of its historical range, but all individuals living today descend from a population bottleneck of fewer than 100 individuals from Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy. The species has few predators and is not threatened, but it has very low genetic diversity. (Full article...)

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... that musician Henry Donch witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and served on the grand jury that indicted the assassin of President Garfield?
... that the Pokémon species Lucario is used to promote fitness programs in Japan?
... that Peter Talbot, the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, was imprisoned in 1678 due to an anti-Catholic conspiracy?
... that the owners of the Narragansett Pier Railroad included a family of industrialists, a dentist, a systems analyst, a lumberyard, and the founder of Textron?
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In the news

Nguyễn Phú Trọng

General secretary and former president of Vietnam Nguyễn Phú Trọng (pictured) dies at the age of 80.
The International Court of Justice finds the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories to be a violation of international law.
A faulty software update by CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity company, causes global computer outages.
In the Rwandan general election, Paul Kagame is re-elected as the president, and the Rwandan Patriotic Front coalition win a majority in the lower house.

On this day

July 20

Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the Moon

1651 – Wars of the Three Kingdoms: After crossing the Firth of Forth, English Commonwealth forces defeated a Scottish army at the Battle of Inverkeithing, opening the rest of the country to occupation.
1867 – The United States Congress established the Indian Peace Commission to seek peace treaties with a number of Native American tribes.
1917 – Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić and Yugoslav Committee president Ante Trumbić signed the Corfu Declaration, agreeing to seek the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
1969 – The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle landed on the Sea of Tranquillity, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon six and a half hours later (bootprint pictured).

Clements Markham (b. 1830)
Wiley Rutledge (b. 1894)
Anna Vyrubova (d. 1964)
Chris Cornell (b. 1964)

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Today's featured picture

Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer and physicist who worked in aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for crucial advances in aerodynamics characterizing supersonic airflow. The human-defined threshold of outer space is named the Kármán line in recognition of his work. This 1959 photograph shows von Kármán (left) joined by United States Air Force and NASA officials while inspecting two missile models used in the high-velocity, high-altitude wind tunnels at Arnold Air Force Base. The missiles shown are the AGARD-B and the Atlas Series-B.

Photograph credit: United States Air Force; restored by Chris Woodrich

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